Python console rejects an object reference, having made an object with that reference as its name in previous line

[Mark Lawrence]

On 15/12/2014 02:32, Chris Roy-Smith wrote:
> On 15/12/14 10:21, Simon Evans wrote:
>> Dear Jussi, and Billy
>> I have changed the input in accordance with your advice, re:
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Python 2.7.6 (default, Nov 10 2013, 19:24:18) [MSC v.1500 32 bit
>> (Intel)] on win
>
> here the user is using python 2.7.6
>
>
>> 32
>> Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>>> from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
>>>>> with open("ecologicalpyramid.html","r") as ecological_pyramid:
>> ...      soup = next(ecological_pyramid,"lxml")
>> ...      producer_entries = soup.find("ul")
>> ...      print(producer_entries.li.div.string)
>> ... print(producer_entries.li.div.string)
>>    File "<stdin>", line 5
>>      print(producer_entries.li.div.string)
>>          ^
>
> and here he uses a python 3.x print syntax which triggers the following
> error message
>
>> SyntaxError: invalid syntax
>>>>> print (producer_entries.li.div.string)
>> Traceback (most recent call last):
>>    File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
>> NameError: name 'producer_entries' is not defined
>

I didn't realise that Python was so smart.  It can indicate a syntax 
error at the final 't' in print before it gets to the opening bracket 
that is required for the print function in Python 3 (and Python 2 if 
you're using "from __future__ import print_function")?

-- 
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence